- Peach
A pregnant woman was getting drunk in the back lounge; I could see her through the hatch, from where I sat at the bar. She was drinking and crying, sitting on the red velveteen couch alone. Chuffy wiped glasses, poured another Cidona for me, and served the few other customers. He looked over at the woman and then nodded in my direction, as a way of asking if I had seen her. I shrugged, to indicate that I had, and watched her. She looked healthy and out of place. We never got many women in The Cova, especially ones we didn't know. Most of us were regulars, bent out of shape by loneliness; we welcomed any intrusion.
The woman sobbed loudly and wrapped her hands around her belly, like it was a beach ball she was about to throw. Her head drooped forward and I could see tears plashing down her shirt. I wondered what was wrong with her. Maybe, I thought, the baby's father had walked out. Maybe, like most of us, the rough magic of her childhood haunted her and she hoped for a better life for her kid. Or, maybe, she didn't want the child at all.
Chuffy walked over and dropped a box of tissues onto her table; she looked up, startled. He put his hand on her shoulder.
"You should think about calling it a night," he said.
"There's no point."
"Drinking for two is not really the thing. You know that."
The woman grimaced. "It's too late," she said, "he's already gone."
I was at the Corporation Market, buying fish for my Friday night kedgeree, when I saw Chuffy trundling down one of the cluttered aisles opposite me. I slotted my fingers inside my lips to whistle but, at that moment, he turned and spoke to a woman walking beside him. Looking at her long hair and the curved egg of her stomach, I realised it was the crying woman from the bar. I pulled my fingers from my mouth and stared. Chuffy's head dipped [End Page 20] close to hers, to hear whatever it was she had said in reply to him. They looked intimate and familiar and I was surprised to find that I felt put out.
I watched Chuffy in The Cova that evening, wondering whether to ask about the woman. Chuffy was fatherly, avuncular even, and he was growing old in that Irish way: the nose and chin sloping towards each other; the skewed, dark pools of his eyes getting lost in his face. I wanted to quiz him about how well he knew the woman—if he really knew her—but my curiosity baffled me, so I didn't ask.
"It's dead tonight," I said, looking around at the mostly empty tables.
"I might close soon and be damned," Chuffy said, flicking the remote at the television and talking over his shoulder to me.
"Were you here earlier?" I said.
"I came in at six. Waste of bloody time."
"I got a nice bit of smoked haddock at Stony's stall today," I said.
"He had nothing left by the time I got there; another bloody waste of time. Drink that back there, Dominic; I'm going to close her up," Chuffy said, flicking the lights behind the bar to let people know he was shutting for the evening.
There was a commotion going on around the phone-box at the end of my road; I strolled past and surveyed the huddle of heads in the group that had gathered. One or two people were looking up and down the street, as if searching for answers or an escape. There was someone lying on the ground, half in and half out of the phone-box; the receiver was dangling. It was the woman from the pub.
"Maud," a man said. "Maud! Can you hear me?"
I knelt down. "She's pregnant," I said.
"Not anymore she's not," the man said and stood up.
"You know her?"
"Not really; she used to work in Creaven's shop. Her name is Maud. Maud Peach." The man...